Messages of condolence are left at a relief centre close to Grenfell Tower.
Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

The former chair of the Grenfell Tower residents’ association has said his warnings of the risks of a catastrophic fire were ignored because of a “vacuum of accountability” in the building’s management.

David Collins lived in the building between April 2014 and October 2016. He was one of the administrators of the blog that warned extensively of structural dangers in the 24-storey block.

He moved out shortly before another member of the association wrote that a serious fire was a real possibility, and likely to be the only thing that would force change. After the devastating blaze that ripped through the building, killing at least 17 people, Collins said a public inquiry – which Theresa May announced on Thursday – was long overdue.

“It’s what we asked for 18 months ago,” he told the Guardian. “It’s what we deserve now.”

When Collins woke on Wednesday morning to the news, he said, “I was appalled, I was angry, I was upset – but I wasn’t surprised. I wasn’t surprised. The worst-case scenario was a fire. We knew there would have to be a tragedy before someone would do something.”

Collins first made the call for an inquiry in January 2016, in a speech at a meeting of Kensington and Chelsea council’s housing and planning scrutiny committee. He also raised residents’ concerns over the conduct of the building’s tenant management organisation (TMO) and its contractors.

The residents’ association was formed after advice from Victoria Borwick, the local MP at the time, but tenants feel their group was not listened to or taken seriously.

At the meeting, Collins presented a survey by the association that found 90% of residents were dissatisfied with the manner in which improvement works had been carried out, and 68% felt they had been harassed or intimidated by the TMO or contractors.

Collins said managers from the contractors had come to his doorstep; other residents were told their tenancy would be under threat and their hot water and heating would be switched off unless they granted access to the TMO’s contractors. Many reported receiving threatening letters from solicitors acting for the TMO demanding entrance to properties, when tenants had not denied entrance to the TMO in the first place.

Collins’s calls were dismissed by the end of the meeting, with the council promising to convene a narrow working group with no defined deadline to look into matters. He heard nothing more.

“There was a vacuum of accountability,” he said. “The TMO were not held to account for their poor service levels. They were left to self-regulate, and councillors didn’t listen to us or hold them to account.”

Collins and the residents felt each complaint about the conduct of the TMO was dismissed by the council, which accepted at face value the TMO’s response that there were no issues, with no investigation or proper engagement with tenants.

Conditions in the block continued to concern residents during and after the recent improvement works, in which the outside of the building was re-clad for insulation and the ground floors were remodelled. Collins directed the Guardian to photographic evidence on the group blog of furniture, mattresses and other large objects dumped in stairwells and corridors, causing a fire hazard. He said it took multiple complaints for dumped items to be removed.

“We asked the council, are you waiting for a tragedy?” Collins said. “The council ignored our blog and the real concerns of everyday people.” Collins could not remember a single fire drill being conducted in the two and a half years he lived in Grenfell Tower. He said other residents reported that the fire brigade had attended the block on the weekend before the tragedy to check on some aspect of the building.

But previous incidents in the block led residents to worry about the functioning of the building’s safety systems in an emergency. There had been small fires before, and tenants had reported to the TMO that emergency lighting in the escape stairwell did not work on every floor. An eyewitness to Wednesday’s blaze told BBC News that he escaped with his family, but when he reached the fourth floor the stairwell was pitch black.

Collins was keen to point out his feeling that the TMO was “incompetent and inept”, rather than acting with malice in its dealing with Grenfell Tower residents, and that the lack of accountability and concern for tenants’ views and experiences was the biggest problem. “[The TMO] weren’t bad people, but the organisation wasn’t true to their values: they said they were resident-led, but did not listen to the residents at all. The lack of accountability for the TMO, the lack of power for the residents, it was a contributing factor in this disaster.”

Collins and other residents spoken to by the Guardian called for the independent inquiry they had asked for previously to be held now, to acknowledge the concerns they had raised for years and explain why they were not listened to and acted upon. “I just want people to know that if they had listened to the residents, and acted upon what was told to them, it could have been different,” Collins said. “It’s impossible to know if this could have been avoided. But people lost their lives, and some jumped to their death and will have done so knowing the TMO didn’t listen.

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“There has to be an independent inquiry that talks to residents first,” he added. “It’s what we asked for. There was a systemic failure to react to security, safety and basic sanitation.”

Collins said he had talked to one neighbour who lived on the same floor as him, but as we spoke realised an older neighbour was unlikely to have made it out. Many of the people in the block had mobility issues and would have adhered to the “stay put” fire safety procedure, because of the advice and the impossibility of descending 21 flights of stairs.

“Some of the people said: ‘They don’t care about us,’” Collins said. “Those people were trapped in their rooms, and they will have died thinking: ‘They didn’t care. They didn’t listen.’”